Post 12: Advanced Production Skills Workshop 2

In our workshop lesson, we learnt how to fully understand lighting, and the different skills and tools needed for variety in lighting. In these workshops, we use the PD150 SONY, to get used to the more advanced camera, and to acheive a better quality in our experiments. After the camera was set up, we set the lighting up, and learnt all about the different tools that can be used. First, we learnt about diffusion. We were shown each slot, including a 1/4, 1/2, full and a little full. These were the different qualities in diffusions that we could use. A quarter was the thinnest, and full was the thickest, depending on how much light you want to block out. The little full was an insert that you could use so you could have a full and a 1/4, and so on. Following this, we learnt about direction of light. This was the result from this experiment:

The problems we found with direction was the positioning of the light, as wherever we seemed to place the light, it was seen in shot. For example at 0:16 the light was seen in shot, and we also had to re-film under with a 1/4 diffusion, as the light was far too harsh on Kelly's face. Throughout, the light seemed too harsh, so it could look to washed out with light, rather than being able to see the full effect of the direction in which the light was projected from. After learning the basics of direction, we learnt how to manipulate it, using barn doors. The function of a barn door is to shape light in any direction you want it to. In this we also learnt how to 'bounce' light. We bounced the light off the ceiling, tin foil, and paper. We experimented with this, and this is how it turned out:

We had a problem with the tin foil bounce, as it didn't seem to have much of an effect, so we used paper aswell. This seemed to work to our advantage. We also experimented with the light with diffusions, as we found the light was too over-powering for some of the shots. Apart from this problem, and the problem with the camera taking time to focus in on Zak after having the black sugar paper fully over the light at 0:17, this task, I felt, went reletivley well. The strength of this experiment was the visible changes you could see in the intensity of light when moving the sugar paper.

After we had got to grips with the lighting, with inspiration from some pictures shown to us on the slideshow, we tried to mimic a 'Vogue' pose. Charlotte placed her hands in front of her face in an attempt to create shadows on her face. Also, in this video, we experimented with 'spot and flood'. Spot is where you focus all the light on one object (i.e. Charlotte) and flood is where you spread the light across the whole frame.

This workshop has helped me to understand how to work the different directions of lighting and the variety of diffusions we can use. In the production of 'Bruises', I will use this knowledge when controlling the strengths of light in each shot, specifically the shots where we need to create chadows of Grace's Father on the walls.